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When Janet Yellen Talks, Why Do People Still Listen? – Ep. 188
25 augustus 2016 · 30 min
* The price of gold fell about $12/oz today; silver prices were down another .28 Lees meer
* Both metals have been falling since recent new yearly highs
* Gold, though is not very much below the highs
* The real carnage has been in the mining stocks, particularly today; today was one of the biggest down days I've seen all year
* The GDX index was down just over 7%
* Some of the mining stocks were down 10% or more on a very small move in the price of gold and silver
* In fact, we've wiped out the last 2 months of gains in the mining stocks
* What is the catalyst for this?
* Early this morning, around 8:30 - 9:00 New York time before the U.S. Stock Market opened
* No news - gold was up 1 or 2 bucks...
* All of a sudden a huge sell order hits and gold drops about 7 or 8 bucks on no news
* Somebody decided to dump a lot of gold on the market, at one time and didn't really care what the execution price was
* Considering how large the sell order was, it didn't really knock the market down very much
* But the gold stock market was a different story
* It kind of made me think that the rationale for getting gold to drop was the impact it might have on the gold stocks themselves
* My guess is that a lot of people who were running with stops, that's when you have an order to sell below the market to try to protect your profits
* My guess is that they hit a lot of stops today in a lot of these mining stocks and maybe, some of the bigger players were able to buy more gold stocks based on the shake-out that was created
* By a relatively modest drop in the price of gold
* Meanwhile, the dollar didn't rise very much today; the downtrend still seems to be firmly in place
* What everybody seems to be focusing on is the Fed
* People are worried about what Janet Yellen might say on Friday
* The Fed's Jackson Hole Conference gets underway tomorrow and Janet Yellen speaks on Friday
* I guess the thoughts are: "Maybe she will say something hawkish."
* Maybe she'll say the U.…
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Fed Advocates Higher Inflation And Larger Deficits! – Ep. 187
17 augustus 2016 · 35 min
* The dollar was broadly weaker today with the dollar index closing down .85 to 94.78 Lees meer
* At that time gold was up about $18; sliver up about .25
* Then all of a sudden New York Fed Chairman William Dudley in an interview on Fox Business basically said that a September rate hike was still possible
* Look, a September alien invasion is still possible, but I'm not going to waste my time preparing for it
* What's amazing to me is how all of the villagers still come running every time a Fed official cries "Wolf!"
* Haven't they noticed that they've cried, "Wolf!" over and over again and there's never a wolf?
* I think that Dudley purposely came out and mentioned a September rate increase just to keep the markets in check; to preserve the false narrative that there is actually a recovery, instead of a bubble
* All of a sudden, gold sold off, it went from +$18 to +$2 or $3
* Silver went negative; it lost its entire rally in a matter of minutes
* I think Dudley was trying to undo the damage done overnight by Dudley's counterpart at the San Francisco Fed, John Williams' well-thought out paper
* Williams wrote in his piece that he believes we're in a "new era". He doesn't understand that the new era that we're in is collateral damage from central bank monetary policy
* They think this is a random occurrence that needs a new government prescription
* John Williams is proposing, based on this "new normal" the neutral interest rate is so low, it's almost impossible for the central banks to get there, absent negative interest rates
* What Williams is proposing, is more inflation
* What he is arguing is that we should scrap this 2% inflation target and that we need a higher number
* I've been saying for years that this is going to happen
* It's just like the unemployment rate, where they said, "We'll raise interest rates if it gets below 6.5% and then we let it go below 5%
* We kept moving that goal post
* I said the same thing was going to happen to inflation
*…
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Kill The Estate Tax To Save Jobs – Ep. 186
10 augustus 2016 · 28 min
* Today we got the official numbers for Q2 Non-Farm Productivity and the consensus was that it would increase for the first time in 3 quarters; the prior 2 quarters we saw a decline in productivity Lees meer
* So analysts were looking for a .5 increase in the second quarter
* Instead, we got a decline of .5
* More importantly, this is the first 3-quarter consecutive decline in productivity since 1979
* That was the Carter years - stagflation, the misery index, sky-high inflation, sky-high interest rates
* That was the last time we had a 3-quarter drop in productivity and President Obama is bragging about how great the recovery is and Hillary Clinton promises more of this
* If you look at the actual size of the decline over those 3 quarters, it's the biggest drop in productivity since 1993
* If you look at the year-over-year decline, this is the biggest decline in productivity in 3 years
* Productivity is extremely important
* Politicians are all talking about higher wages - "We need higher wages!"
* You can't get higher wages without higher productivity.
* That is where higher wages come from
* Now, a lot of politicians want to substitute government decrees - they want to mandate higher wages
* Like minimum wage - we're going to force employers to pay this minimum wage
* All that does, is raise the bar; it makes it harder for unskilled workers to get a job in the first place
* Now employers are forced to pay a wage that may be well above the productivity that they can deliver
* In that case, they can't get the job
* Mimimum Wage doesn't just raise wages, it raises the bar
* Another popular way that politicians try to mandate higher compensation is by mandating benefits such as health care, sick leave, paid vacation days, or overtime
* The idea is that you're getting something for nothing - I voted for this guy and he delivered
* That's not how it works
* When an employer hires somebody, they look at the overall cost of employing that person, relative to …
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“Strong” Jobs Report More Politics Than Economics – Ep. 185
6 augustus 2016 · 38 min
* What a difference a week makes, or maybe and economic report Lees meer
* The two big reports that everybody seems to focus on are the GDP numbers and the jobs numbers
* It seems that the weaker the economy is, as measured by GDP, the more jobs, somehow, the economy seems to create
* We got the jobs report for July and just a week earlier we got Q2 GDP
* As I spoke about on the last podcast, that number was basically half of what Wall Street had been anticipating - less than half
* They were looking for 2.4 or 2.6 and we got 1.2
* Even worse, we went back and revised down the prior 2 quarters to below 1%
* That very weak number caused people to talk about the fact that the Fed can't raise rates, the economy is weaker than we thought, are we slipping back into recession?...
* Now fast forward a week, and we get a Non-Farm Payroll report that is higher than anticipated and now all of a sudden people are starting to talk about September rate hikes again
* Obviously, withe the stock market on Friday rising to a new record high, I doubt the equity traders actually believe that Friday's jobs report is going to produce a rate hike
* Yet it doesn't stop all the financial journalists writing about how this confirms that the recovery is on track, and the Fed can raise rates
* This jobs report doesn't confirm anything
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Will The Fed Sacrifice The Recovery Myth To Save The Markets? – Ep.184
3 augustus 2016 · 32 min
* The carnage in global stock and bond markets continues; it really got started last night in Japan Lees meer
* The JGB (Japanese Government Bonds) dropped for the 3rd consecutive day
* The biggest 3-day drop in bond prices in Japan in over 3 years, so yields surging, along with the Japanese yen
* Of course, this is not supposed to be happening because they're doing more stimulus and they've got negative interest rates, yet the Japanese yen is appreciating anyway
* The Reserve Bank of Australia also came out last night and cut interest rates to 1.5%
* That is an all-time record low
* Why did they do that? Is it because there's not enough economic growth in Australia?
* Are they trying to revive a slumping property market
* They've got a bubble in the real estate market - there's no valid reason for cutting interest rates from already low levels
* The actual reason that the Reserve Bank of Australia gave for the rate cut was that inflation was not high enough
* It's about 1%, the way they measure it, and their goal is to have it between 2 and 3%
* In other words, the cost of living is going up by 1% a year and the Reserve Bank of Australia says, "That's horrible! We need to make sure that things get at least 2-3% more expensive this year and we're going to slash interest rates to make sure that happens."
* Of course, when you do that, you have all sorts of risks, and what is the payoff?
* Why is the cost of living going up 2-3% better than it going up 1%?
* What's wrong with the cost of living not going up at all?
* How about if it actually went down? What if people could actually buy the things they need for less money?
* What's horrible about the standard of living actually going up?
* Of course, the real risk is, what if inflation goes from 1% (at least the way they measure it) to 4 or 5%?
* Was it worth it? Now you have an inflation problem on your hands
* If you've got 1% and you want 2% - You're close enough!
* Obviously this has got nothing to do wi…
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FOMC Upstaged By DNC – Ep. 183
28 juli 2016 · 29 min
* Today the Federal Reserve concluded its 2-day FOMC meeting and it announced - surprise, surprise - that interest rates are not going up Lees meer
* But of course the statement was much more important than their actions because these days, it doesn't matter what the Fed does; all that matters is what they say they're going to do, or more accurately, what they will pretend to do
* It really doesn't matter what they say, they're not going to do anything
* I explained that on my last podcast; I explained it again on CNBC Futures Now
* People obviously still don't get it and I continue to use the analogy of Teddy Roosevelt's "Speak softly and carry a big stick." but if you have no stick, which is the situation with the Fed, then you have to speak loudly, and if you speak loudly enough, nobody will notice that you have no stick at all
* That's what the Fed did today when they did not raise rates, but released their somewhat hawkish statement, saying that the near-term risks to the economic outlook have diminished
* What does that mean?
* We think the economy looks better, and therefore a rate hike might be appropriate
* The Fed said that the job market had strengthened, which it did for one month - we had one strong month, but it is a low bar
* But that is only superficial - when you look beneath the surface, it is worse
* According to the Fed, the job market strengthened and the economy is expanding at a moderate rate
* If we have an strengthening job market and the economy is expanding moderately, why are interest rates still practically zero?
* The Fed mentioned that household spending is growing, but again the bar is set pretty low
* The continued to say that they believe the economy is evolving in a way that will warrant gradual rate hikes
* By gradual they mean, "No more rate hikes."
* They raised rates once in January and they haven't raised them since
* I think the tightening cycle ended when they raised rates, and began when they started to talk about ta…
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Playing The Trump Card – Ep. 182
23 juli 2016 · 43 min
* It's official. The unthinkable, according to the status quo earlier in the campaign, Donald Trump is the Republican Nominee Lees meer
* Although many wrote him off as a candidate, I never did; I always said he was being underestimated
* I believed his message would resonate given how horrible the economy actually is and what is really happening beneath the headlines
* Everybody was proclaiming recovery and that we're on the right track and I knew that that wasn't the case
* I knew there would be a lot of dissatisfaction among the electorate on both sides of the aisle
* Even after Donald Trump locked up the Republican nomination, everybody was still writing him off
* The idea was, "He's going to lose in a landslide"
* Republican establishment said, "Abandon ship!", distancing themselves from Trump to maintain the House and the Senate, writing off the White House
* Maybe run against Hillary in 4 years
* That was the general consensus
* Again, I kept saying the the media and the political establishment on both sides were underestimating Donald Trump and the potential appeal of a Trump presidency
* I think that the speech he gave at the convention really proves that point
* I thought his speech was brilliant.
* When I say brilliant, I don't necessarily agree with everything he said; I clearly don't
* I'm talking about the political perspective
* Was this an effective speech to set the tone of the campaign?
* In that respect, I think he hit the ball out of the park
* The most clever thing about his speech is he didn't go after the Republicans
* He went after the Democrats
* He went after their base; their core constituency
* He is bringing the fight to their turf
* He went for the women, he went for the minorities
* Not just African Americans and Latinos, but the LGBTQ and the blue collar workers
* Donald Trump did not go after the entrepreneur
* He didn't promise to get government off your back and free up the businessman from red tape
* That's a typic…
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One Quarter-Point Rate Hike Does Not Make Me Wrong – Ep. 181
20 juli 2016 · 38 min
* I was in Las Vegas for the Freedom Fest and following that I went to Vancouver for a one-day gold conference Lees meer
* One of the things I wanted to discuss was some discussion about me on the www.kitco.com website and I think it was prompted by my itnterview with kitco, which you can see on my YouTube Channel
* Whenever there is a discussion about me an argument develops between those who want to believe I never get anything right and those with believe I get a lot of things right
* I thought one part of the discussion was quite amusing
* Of course, I never claim to be infallible; when you make a lot of projections they don't all turn out to be right
* Nobody is 100% right on anything that they say
* The key is, are you right more often than you are wrong
* And when you're wrong, do you change your mind, when the facts change, which is something that I do
* But people will always go back and focus on a quote from years ago and say, "Look here's a quote from Peter Schiff saying interest rates would go up, and Look! now they're down"
* I did not expect the bond bubble to get this big
* Who thought we'd have half of the sovereign debt trading for negative yields?
* Very few people envisioned that, but it happened
* For the last several years I have said nothing about higher interest rates
* I do believe that when the bond bubble bursts rates will spike up
* But I don't know when that is going to happen
* If you've made enough forecasts, one can always find things that have not panned out
* But these people overlook the overwhelming number of forecasts I've gotten right
* One of the forecasts people used to make fun of me about was a forecast I made on a show called, "Southland Today"
* I put that up on the internet years ago, it's a 2002 interview and if you watch that clip, you'll recognize that a lot of the things I said in that interview were used to form the introduction to the old, "Wall Street Unspun" the precursor to the Peter Schiff Show
* The in…
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SchiffGold Joint Venture With GoldMoney
9 juli 2016 · 59 min
* I'm sitting with Josh Crumb, the co-founder of a company that was originally called BitGold but following the acquisition of James Turk's GoldMoney they rebranded their company as GoldMoney Lees meer
* I agree with that decision because I think GoldMoney is more descriptive of what they are really doing with gold, than is BitGold
* But the reason we're sitting here today is because I was so impressed with their company after having lengthy conversations with the other co-founder, Roy Sebag, that I really agreed with Roy and I thought that the best thing for us to do was to join forces and to combine both companies to the mutual benefit of both investors and, more importantly customers of both my company SchiffGold, and GoldMoney
* So we've agreed on a merger and we've formed a joint venture between the two companies
* What I wanted to announce today is what this new joint venture means for current customers of my company, SchiffGold
* One of the things customers might be thinking is: "Does this mean that my experience is going to change?"
* GoldMoney (BitGold) is much more of an internet-based program where people are not interacting with live representatives
* The answer to that question is no.
* Nothing is going to change regarding the our customers' relationships with SchiffGold
* In fact, what we're hoping to achieve is to bring some of that personal service to the current GoldMoney customers
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Market Reaction To Jobs Report Confirms My Hypothesis – Ep. 180
9 juli 2016 · 25 min
* Today we got the Non-Farm Payroll report for the month of June Lees meer
* Remember the last 2 reports were quite weak and everybody was hoping for a rebound in June to prove that April and May were a fluke and not a new trend
* In fact the Fed talked about that in their last FOMC meeting minutes
* The consensus was for 180,000 jobs to be created and the range went from a low of 130,000 to as high as 235,000
* The consensus average of that range was 180,000
* The actual number came in at 287,000, over 100,000 jobs above the consensus
* Now we did revise down the really bad number from May, and made it even worse
* Initially that number was 38,000 jobs and now we know it was just 11,000 jobs
* So about 70% of the jobs disappeared
* I have a good feeling that the reason June's number is so high is that it's just wrong, and we'll see what kind of revision we get to it next month
* Remember, a good chunk of these numbers are jobs that the government assumes were created without evidence, based on the birth-death model
* I would suggest that far fewer businesses are actually being formed than the government believes
* In fact, its possible that more business are shutting down than are hiring
* Given the economy and the minimum wage, those business that are starting up are hiring fewer people than start-up historically hire
* I think these guesstimates are wildly optimistic and skewing all the numbers
* Unemployment rate, which was 4.7 last month and expected to notch up to 4.8, instead notched up higher to 4.9
* Private payrolls which were expected to rise by $170,000 jumped by $265,000
* But last month they revised a $25,000 gain to a $6,000 loss
* Why did unemployment move up? Because the labor force participation rate notched up from 62.6 to 62.7
* Obviously not all the people who re-joined the labor force could find jobs
* Average hourly earnings were expected to rise by .2%
* Again they disappointed; they rose by just .1%
* Overall, a mixed picture, b…
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Fed Minutes Reveal The Easing Cycle Has Already Begun – Ep. 179
7 juli 2016 · 33 min
* Gold and silver prices continue to march higher Lees meer
* Gold was up another $7 today; it closed at $1363.20 - that is the high for the year
* Silver was up .15 at $20.06
* Silver is now going up relative to the price of gold which is very for the precious metals complex
* Gold stocks are on fire; the XAU index, a gold stock index was up 3.27% today
* It's now up better than 135% on the year and well over 150% from the lows on the third week in January
* But do you think that any major players on Wall Street have recommended gold stocks?
* Do any of the big hedge funds have positions in gold?
* No! They are clueless
* What is happening, as I have said before, is that there is a picture, that's kind of blurry, but it's coming into focus, still not clear, but it's a game changer
* The perception is that we had this great recovery and that the Fed was going to be able to unwind its balance sheet, normalize interest rates and everything was going to be great
* So the whole investment world was preparing for higher rates, a stronger dollar and a stronger U.S. economy
* But what is the actual picture?
* The actual picture is an economic recovery that is over, if it ever even happened,
* The Fed is finished tightening and they're about to start a new easing campaign
* We're not done with QE; we're just getting started - QE3 is closer to the beginning than the end
* Rather than shrinking the balance sheet, it's about to explode
* This picture is getting clearer and now you see the markets re-pricing
* Gold is going up every day
* Gold stocks are going up
* The banks are getting crushed
* The European banks hit new lows again today
* FOMC minutes came out for June and what did the minutes reveal?
* The members were concerned about weakening employment number and they wanted more data before raising rates
* They wanted to make sure the weakening numbers were an aberration rather than a new trend
* Who didn't see that coming?
* Also they wanted to see wha…
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Why Buy Bonds When You Can Buy Gold? – Ep. 178
2 juli 2016 · 26 min
* I wish everybody a happy July 4th weekend; U.S. markets will be closed Lees meer
* It's unfortunate that we can't really celebrate all the traditions that we're supposed to be honoring were lost generations ago
* The values our founding fathers risked their lives for have all been lost
* I wanted to comment on what is going on in the markets particularly today
* Today was the capper on the week
* You had silver prices up about a dollar an ounce
* Gold closed up about $19, so gold closed above $1340
* Maybe by the time the market opens on Tuesday silver will be over $20/ounce
* Who knows, maybe gold will be over $1400?
* This is a powerful rally - gold finished at three year highs today
* GDX was up about 5% on the day
* The stock market didn't do that much today, but the real story, other than the gold market is in the bond market
* U.S. Treasury yield plunging again - these are the lowest yields ever
* Certainly below the crash lows
* The yield on the 10-year treasury is below 1.5%
* The yield on the 10-year treasury is 2.24%
* So yields are plunging, bond prices are surging
* What is going on?
* The answer is money printing; Quantitative Easing
* The most recent catalyst being the Brexit vote, which scared the hell out of everybody because of the collapse, particularly of the European banks
* Now the central bankers are rushing to the rescue all around the world
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If The Markets Were Healthy Brexit Would Be A Non- Event – Ep.177
29 juni 2016 · 34 min
* It was Turnaround Tuesday in the global financial markets as stocks are recovering from 2 days of carnage following the surprise Brexit vote in the U.K. Lees meer
* The Dow was up almost 270 points today, NASDAQ up about 97
* But really the markets got beaten up the last couple days
* The smallest bounce was from the banks, which have been beaten up the most
* So they had the biggest drop and the smallest bounce
* Which really shows you how weak that sector is
* It couldn't even manage much of a dead cat bounce
* In fact, the carnage in, particularly the European banks is much bigger than it was during the financial crisis of '08
* This really shows you how much more levered up the banking system must be, thanks to all these years of QE and negative interest rates
* And of course, how much farther behind can the American banks be from their European cousins?
* U.S bank stocks, too, were hitting 52-week lows yesterday
* I still think there's a lot of carnage coming
* Some banks may be in a position where they are going to have to raise equity, which means they'll have to sell stock
* Clearly the market is not going to like that
* But again, everybody is blaming this on all the uncertainty surrounding Brexit
* To me, if we had a healthy financial system, if the markets were sound, and prices were based on fundamentals
* Would it really make that much of a difference if the UK were in the EU or not?
* What is being revealed here is the fragility of the whole system that is being propped up artificially by the banks
* By cheap money, low interest rates - everybody is speculating
* And everybody is assuming that the powers that be, whether it is the politicians, the governments or the central banks have everything under control
* It's a big put out there and nothing can go wrong
* And then when something does go wrong, then people get nervous
* The wake up and say, "Wait a minute! Maybe it's not as safe as we thought!"
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Brexit Is Not The Reason; It’s The Catalyst – Ep. 176
25 juni 2016 · 31 min
* The British actually voted to leave the EU and it wasn't even that close Lees meer
* I think by midnight last night EDT it was obvious that Leave was going to beat Remain
* I think it ended up 52% voting to Brexit and 48% voting to remain
* Of course, the markets were taken by surprise, in fact, we had a rally in to the close on Thursday as everybody was so confident that the polls would be right, and the online casinos would be right and that it was pretty much a sure thing that the British would vote to remain
* All of the experts, the economists and the political elites around the world, including President Obama had lectured the British as to why the smart thing is to stay in the EU and how dangerous it would be, economic Armageddon - if they voted to leave
* Of course this may have been reverse psychology
* Especially when you've been sold a bill of goods over and over again, with cost of living rising and standard of living going down
* The may be reaching for straws in the same manner as the Americans are voting for Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders
* The straw that they had was Brexit
* I think the markets are overreacting to the implications of the U.K. leaving the EU
* After all, think of all the countries that aren't in the EU
* Why aren't we all members?
* Why doesn't the U.S. join?
* They can't even get Switzerland to join the EU and it's located smack in the middle of Europe
* One of the reasons why Switzerland is so prosperous is that it had the good sense not to join the EU
* I think the markets believed their own hype
* For so long, we've been talking about how awful it would be if the British actually voted to leave that when they did so, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy
* Everybody is in this for a quick trade
* A lot of traders are all levered up and do the minute this thing happened everybody hit the same sell button
* This is just about traders having to reverse their bets
* Look at what happened in the flight to safety - the dollar …
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Janet Yellen Doesn’t Know Murphy’s Law – Ep.175
23 juni 2016 · 23 min
* I'm on vacation this week but I did take a little time out to little time out to listen to Janet Yellen's semi-annual "Humphrey-Hawkins" testimony - she testified first before the Senate, that was yesterday and today she was before the house Lees meer
* It used to be a lot more interesting with Ron Paul was on the house banking committee and you could see Ron Paul asking questions to Ben Bernanke
* I really would like to hear Rand Paul questioning Janet Yellen but unfortunately, we don't have that opportunity
* Also, the big news, we are on the eve of the Brexit vote in the U.K.; it's going to be on Thursday
* Polls of investor sentiment show the remain camp is firmly in the lead
* Betting certainly shows that more money is on the remain, but more people are betting on leave
* Probably, though the remain camp will carry the day; the forces of big government are very hard to overcome
* Nowhere is big government better exemplified than in the case of the Federal Reserve, which is the combination of big government and central banking
* Janet Yellen's testimony, I thought, was relatively boring, but I'm going to go over some of the more important tidbits
* Yellen keeps referring to the recovery that appears to be on track and the rate hike is just around the corner
* All this is nonsense - if the Fed were going to raise rates, they would have already done so
* One senator or congressman asked Yellen about the box the Fed might be in because the rates are still so low, what tools does Yellen have to fight off the next recession
* Yellen confidently replied that we have all the tools we've always had, which is true
* They still have those tools; the problem is that these tools have never worked
* They can't cut rates, much, they can print all the money they want, they can do QE4, it can be bigger than QE3, and it probably will be
* Even though Janet Yellen, in response to a direct question about negative interest rates, said that she didn't think the Fed would go …
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Alien Invasion More Likely Than July Rate Hike – Ep.174
18 juni 2016 · 32 min
* Gold closed the week at the highest weekly close since January of 2015 Lees meer
* Not quite above the $1300 benchmark - I think we closed about $1298 - up about $20 on the day
* Intra-day yesterday, gold was well above $1300
* Until there was news that a British Member of Parliament was shot and that somehow revised hope for the "stay" vote in the Brexit referendum
* As if the price of gold is going up based on the outcome of that vote
* As far as I'm concerned next week's vote is a non-event for the gold market
* The conventional wisdom seems to believe that if Britain leaves, all hell is going to break loose in Europe
* I guess all this chaos is supposed to be bullish for gold
* If Britain votes to stay, the euro will go up and that might be bullish for gold, because a weak dollar is generally bullish for gold
* I think gold will go up regardless of the British vote
* The price of gold is not going up because of what's happening in Europe
* It's going up because of what's happening in the United States
* More specifically at the Federal Reserve
* The Federal Reserve concluded its June meeting on Wednesday and Janet Yellen - surprise! did not raise interest rates
* If you remember, a few months ago, some minutes leaked to the public caused the public to think the Fed would raise rates in June for sure - maybe July, but probably June
* And gold tanked and the dollar rallied and I said, "I don't think so."
* There's nothing in these minutes that say the Fed is going to do anything
* It's the same old Open Mouth Operation
* If you read between the lines, they didn't commit to anything
* But she cried wolf and everybody came running, and
* Not only did the Fed not raise in June but they backtracked on their intentions to raise rates in the future
* They toned down their so-called dot plots for this year and next year
* Now, instead of announcing the first rate hike of the year, they actually pushed back expectations
* There were a lot of articles about…
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Brexit Not The Reason Fed Won’t Hike In June – Ep. 173
14 juni 2016 · 36 min
* This is the week of the June FOMC meeting, although it's really going to be a dud Lees meer
* For a while there was speculation that the Fed was going to pull the trigger and increase interest rates for the second in almost 10 years - for the first time this year
* I don't know if anybody expects the Fed to raise rates on Wednesday - it's a 2 day meeting, it gets started tomorrow and we get the announcement on Wednesday afternoon
* Brexit was one of the things they were concerned about
* Now the polls are showing that a British exit of the EU is becoming more and more likely and that was one of the things supposedly the Fed was concerned about
* I think all that is an excuse - they're really concerned about the U.S. bubble economy and domestic problems
* But they don't want to acknowledge that so they want to rationalize their decisions with problems abroad
* That vote is looking like it may go the wrong way as far as the powers that be are concerned
* I've already mentioned on this podcast that if I were in Britain, I would vote to go
* It's not because I'm anti free trade, I'm for free trade - it's just that the EU is no longer about free trade
* That was its initial pretext and it might have been a good idea, but no idea that involves more government can ever be good
* The problem with government is that it grows and grows and grows
* Like the camel getting its nose under the tent
* That's what happening in the EU and the British are finally saying we've had enough
* It's too bad the British don't have enough with their own big government, but they don't want big government imposed from Brussels
* Whatever benefits member nations got in the beginning from freer trade, they've lost from regulations, taxation and micro-management coming out of the EU
* As I said before, the only reason there was a need for the EU is because governments impose too many tariffs and regulation and theoretically the solution was to let some other entity circumvent all the othe…
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Government Schools Dumb Down The Electorate – Ep.172
8 juni 2016 · 39 min
* Janet Yellen spoke yesterday and this was the first time she spoke following the release of the much weaker than expected Non-Farm Payroll report that we got on Friday Lees meer
* Not only was the month of May much weaker than expected but they revised down the prior month which was already weaker than expected and now it is even more weak
* This is the first time the Fed had a chance to react, remember Janet Yellen and all her cohorts at the Fed had been talking about how the economy is getting better and how we're getting ready for a summer rate hike
* Everybody was thinking, "Will they move in June or will they wait until July?
* Of course, I was saying all along that I doubted that they would move in either month
* They did make it clear, if you read the FOMC minutes that it was contingent on the labor market improving
* I had already pointed out that based on the most recent jobs report the labor market was already not improving, it was getting worse, and now we know it is even worse than the Fed would have understood
* By the time the minutes were released we had had all this bad news
* While people were jumping to the conclusion that the Fed was about to hike rates, even though the labor market had weakened since they expressed those sentiments and the Fed specifically said that the rate hike was contingent on improvements in the labor market, and we were getting the reverse
* I never understood why so many people were so convinced that a rate hike this summer was a fait accomplit
* But now all the people who were so convinced have caved in and no longer expect a rate hike in June or July, but they're talking September! Why?
* Well Janet Yellen spoke yesterday and she's still talking about rate hikes
* She still said she thinks the economy is improving and at some point rate hikes will be appropriate
* Well of course! That qualifies as a "Duh!" Obviously if the economy was improving, rate hikes would be appropriate, in fact they're appropriate right now…
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May Jobs Report Takes June Rate Hike Off The Table – SchiffReport
4 juni 2016 · 28 min
* It was a few weeks ago, following the release of the FOMC meetings, in which the various governors appeared quite hawkish in their tone Lees meer
* They were talking about the resurgent U.S. economy, the strengthening labor market and that they thought it would be appropriate to raise interest rates in June
* As a result of that, the markets reacted, the dollar had a big rise, gold dropped
* Gold had risen to almost $1300 when everybody thought the Fed wasn't going to raise rates
* Now as soon as the Fed changed the conversation, and they put rate hikes back on the table, gold touched below $1200
* The dollar index got as high as 96 earlier this week
* But the catalyst for the rally of the dollar and the decline in gold was the Fed, and the anticipation of rate hikes coming this month
* In fact, in the days and weeks that followed the release of the unexpectedly hawkish FOMC minutes various Fed officials were out giving speeches
* Every one of them talked about how it was going to be appropriate to raise rates, how we are bouncing back from the unexpected Q1 weakness, and that now the Fed is finally going to resume normalizing rates
* The first time they raised rates was December last year; of course they talked about it all year before they finally went up by a quarter point
* If they went up by another quarter point in June of this year, it's still, it's still a pace much slower than Greenspan used
* He was moving up a quarter every time they met
* This would be a quarter every 6 months
* Even if the Fed were going to raise rates in June, that would have been the only hike of the year
* I didn't even believe that they were going to do it in Juneof
* If you listen to one of my recent podcasts at the beginning of the June rate hike talk, I was saying,
* "How can they talk about a June rate hike? They haven't seen the May jobs report, which will come out in the first week of June, and if that jobs report is weak, they're not going to raise rates
* And even …
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Yellen Loves Economics; Too Bad She Doesn’t Understand It – Ep. 171
1 juni 2016 · 25 min
* Well the tone and tenor of the discourse of the various market pundits and Wall Street economists seems to be that this recovery is on track Lees meer
* I guess there were some doubts about the recovery until the Federal Reserve laid all those doubts to rest based on the confidence with which they discussed the likelihood that the Fed would raise interest rates in June or July
* The confidence persists despite the drumbeat of consistently weaker than expected numbers
* Once in a while, we're getting better than expected numbers, but the beats are in the minority
* Sometimes we get a number that superficially appears better than the forecast, but as soon as you actually delve beneath a very thin surface, you see a lot of negative details that don't make the headlines
* People overlook a lot of information beneath the surface that is actually quite bad
* But before I get into the economic data, I want to talk a little about Janet Yellen
* On Friday she gave a monetary policy speech at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard
* Yellen studied economics at prestigious institutions, herself
* Economics is Janet Yellen's passion; she's dedicated to economics
* For someone who has dedicated herself to one subject, it's amazing how little she actually knows, despite going to our nation's best universities
* It might be that the upper echelon universities are so deeply wedded to Keynesianism that a student might get a better economics education at a community college
* One of the things that Janet Yellen said during her speech was that she she believes in capitalism, but that the government needs to protect the economy because capital is prone to "breakdowns" that cause mass unemployment and that we need government, or central banks to save capitalism from itself
* Capitalism is not prone to breakdowns, nor is it prone to mass unemployment - in fact it's just the opposite
* Capitalism is stable; it has a cyclical nature much less pronounced absent the F…
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Stock Market Bulls Charge Again On “Rate Hikes Don’t Matter” – Ep. 170
25 mei 2016 · 28 min
* It really is amazing how short memories are on Wall Street Lees meer
* This seems exactly like December when everybody was convinced that a rate hike wouldn't matter because the economy was improving and the market can handle higher rates
* And the stock market rallied right up until the Fed actually raised rates, and then it rallied a little bit, and then it rolled over and we had the worst decline to begin a year in the history of the stock market
* Well flash forward to the Fed now saying that they are going to raise rates in June - or at least everybody believing that the Fed is going to raise rates in June and all of a sudden we are having this huge stock market
* We had a huge up day yesterday on the idea that the economy is improving and the Fed is going to raise rates
* The market is going up on the assumption that the economy can handle higher rates based on the economic data, which is another reason why the Fed might feel comfortable raising rates because the market is not selling off
* So the market is giving the Fed the go-ahead to notch rates up another .25
* That was exactly the attitude prior to the last rate hike
* The Fed make the mistake of raising rates in spite of weak data
* As a matter of fact, if you go back to the minutes of the FOMC meeting, which is what ignited this whole Fed rate hike narrative, the Fed said it all depends on the data
* If the economy continues to improve, if the labor market continues to improve, then we'll hike rates
* But the reality is that the data tells the opposite story
* Ever since the last Fed meeting, the economic data, on balance, has been weaker than expected - not stronger than expected
* Including all the data that has come out this week
* But, hey - nobody cares - because the Fed says everything is great, so we can ignore the data because if they think the economy is great, it must be great
* Forget about the fact that they have a horrible track record - the economy must be great!
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Fed Cries Wolf, Traders Come Running – Ep. 169
19 mei 2016 · 20 min
* I wanted to record a short podcast today just to discuss the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) minutes that were released at 2:00pm this afternoon ET, which reflect the views of the Fed when they had their April meeting, some 6 weeks ago, when the Fed decided not to raise rates Lees meer
* As a result of the release of these minutes, everybody has now jumped to the conclusion that a June rate hike is not only on the table, but basically a done deal
* I heard people talking about it on CNBC, "The Fed had to do this to show they are on a path to normalization - they said they would have a gradual pace, so they had no excuse but to do this."
* Do what? They haven't actually raised rates, they've just talked about it
* Let me read you the statement they made about rates:
Most participants judged that if incoming data were consistent with economic growth picking up in the second quarter, labor market conditions continuing to strengthen, and inflation making progress toward the Committee's 2 percent objective, then it likely would be appropriate for the Committee to increase the target range for the federal funds rate in June.
* They didn't say they would do it, they said it would LIKELY be appropriate
* Likely doesn't mean definitely, and appropriate doesn't mean they're going to do it
* Because even if they determine that it is appropriate it doesn't mean they will do it
* Before you even get to the likely and appropriate part of the statement, 2 things have to happen, or 3 things if you want to count inflation, but inflation has already happened
* The economy has to pick up in Q2 - It doesn't look likely that that's going to happen - it is possible that we could get a second quarter stronger than the horrible Q1 but is 1 - 1.5% economic growth in Q2 picking up? It will still average out to a weak first half of the year
* But the Fed also wants to see that labor conditions continue to strengthen
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Goodbye Fed Credibility, Hello Stagflation – Ep. 168
18 mei 2016 · 30 min
* Another volatile day in the stock market sees the major averages deep in the red Lees meer
* The Dow was down just over 1%; down 180 points, 17,529
* The NASDAQ actually got walloped a little more; down just shy of 60 points, 1.25%
* I think the catalyst for today's declines was a couple of Fed officials talking about how June is a live meeting - live from the perspective of, "We might raise interest rates"
* I don't think it's live at all, I think it's dead, and if it were alive, the stock market decline would kill it
* If Wall Street actually believes that the Fed is serious about raising rates in June, the market would be tanking
* In fact, if more people believed it, the market would be down more than 180 points today
* As we got closer and closer to the date that the Fed was theoretically going to raise rates, the market would be so low, that any talk of a rate hike would be dead, because the Fed would be dealing with tighter financial conditions
* The Fed doesn't want to tighten monetary policy with financial conditions are tightening on their own
* It's interesting, too, that you hear people asking, "Why does the Fed have a June rate hike on the table"? I keep hearing about the economy strengthening
* The economy is not strengthening! That's just the point, the economy is weakening
* Yes we did get a little data in the last few days that was better than expected, buy we also got data that was worse than expected
* Most of the financial data that has come out since the last time the Fed hiked rates has been bad
* If the Fed is talking about raising rates, it's not because the economy is getting stronger, it is despite the fact that the economy is getting weaker
* What is getting stronger is inflation
* The problem is, even though inflation is above the Fed's so-called 2% target, I don't think this raises the probability of a rate hike
* If anything, the increase in prices will slow down the economy even more
* We actually got some official inflation …
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How Much More Bad News Can The Markets Withstand? – Ep. 167
13 mei 2016 · 27 min
* The markets continue, really, to ignore all of the overwhelming bad news Lees meer
* Bad news on the economy, bad news on the corporate earnings front, retail sales - you name it, the news is bad
* But the markets seem to shrug it off
* All the markets - the equity markets, the foreign exchange markets, bond markets, the gold and silver markets
* Sure, there is usually a knee-jerk reaction - you get some bad news, the gold spikes up, the dollar dumps, but then it recovers what it lost and gold surrenders its gains and we continue to stay the course, because to me the bad news isn't sinking in
* Yes, the stock market has been trending down, particularly the NASDAQ
* But it really hasn't rolled over
* Yes we had the big drop yesterday, the Dow was down about 200 points, but it was up 200 points the day before
* So over two days, we didn't go anywhere, despite the fact that we continue to get bad news
* I'll start with some of the bad news that came out today and then work back
* I think the worse news of the day was the weekly unemployment claims which is now finally started to move higher
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Politics Trumps Truth – Ep. 166
10 mei 2016 · 26 min
* Today I really want to talk more about Donald Trump, in particular, the firestorm that I think I lit with respect to Trump comments with respect to defaulting on the National Debt Lees meer
* Now I really believe that I am the first guy to have picked up on that because, when he originally talked about that on CNBC, and Becky Quick said, "Wait a minute, are you talking about compromising our credit rating?"
* That's when Donald Trump said, "No, no, no, I'm not talking about defaulting I'm talking about refinancing and Becky Quick let it go, she accepted the explanation, and nobody else on CNBC at the time said anything
* Later that day, I was contacted by CNBC - I had already agreed to do Futures Now on CNBC.com in reaction to the article I had written at the end of last week on Donald Trump and I said, "Hey, wait a minute, why don't we also talk about his comments today about defaulting on the debt
* And the producer said, "What are you talking about?"
* I described his comments and said, go get the clip and we'll talk about it on the program
* She had no idea that Trump had said anything like that and nobody was talking about it, but I had tweeted about it in real time as soon as I heard Trump say that, as he was still in the studio talking
* I heard nothing about it until after my CNBC interview took place and then there were articles about it - even the New York Times wrote a big article about it
* In fact, so much was written about it that Donald Trump had to officially respond to the idea that he said he wanted to default on the debt
* Which of course he never actually did - he never actually said it, but it's clear to me that that is exactly what he meant - he wasn't just implying it, that's what he was thinking
* But Donald Trump is not a career politician, so he's not always thinking about the political ramifications of just speaking off the cuff, and talking honestly, which is what he was doing
* All of a sudden, when he put his presidential candidate …
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Ep. 165: Markets In Denial About Jobs As Trump Lets Truth Slip About Debt
7 mei 2016 · 32 min
* Today we got the government's Non-Farm Payroll report, otherwise known as the Jobs Report, for the month of April and pretty much all the mainstream Wall Street guys were looking for another strong report Lees meer
* In fact, earlier in the week Goldman Sachs was out saying that the 200,000 consensus estimate was too low!
* The optimism was unfazed by the much weaker than expected ADP report I spoke about on my last podcast on Wednesday, which came in much lighter than expected
* So, people didn't care, they said, "That's a one-off event, we're still looking for a good number, and we got a weak report
* Instead of 200,000 jobs we only got 160,000 jobs
* And they actually revised down the last couple of months
* But let's get into some of the details, because it gets worse, the further beneath the surface you look
* The unemployment rate held steady at 5%; they were expecting it to notch down to 4.9% - that did not happen
* Private payrolls also much lighter than expected; they were looking for 195,000; they got 171,000 and they revised down last month's from 195K to 184K
* They did get the .3% increase in average hourly earnings, but they forgot to point out that they revised month's .3% increase down to .2% so you can chalk that one up as a miss, despite the fact that nobody was talking about it
* The bigger miss was in the Labor Force Participation Rate
* Last month it was 63%, which was a move up, but in April it came back down to 62.8%
* 562,000 people left the labor force during the month of April
* A massive exodus led by young people
* A breakdown in the Household Survey for ages 20-24 reported 155,000 job losses in April
* For ages 25 - 54 - 284,000 jobs losses
* For ages over the age of 55 - this is the highest it has ever been
* Janet Yellen still wants to pretend that the reason the Labor Force Participation Rate is declining is because the Baby Boom is retiring - how much longer is she going to get away with that lie?
* The Baby Boom is too br…
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It’s Government Not Technology That Lowers Living Standards – Ep.164
5 mei 2016 · 33 min
* And then there was one; Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee for 2016 Lees meer
* I remember when this Republican Primary started and the field was very wide
* They had to split the debates up between the main event and the under card because there were so many candidates
* Nobody in the mainstream really gave Donald Trump a shot
* Even though I wasn't supporting, Trump - I was supporting Rand Paul and more recently Ted Cruz as the candidates who were ideologically closest to me
* I always thought that Donald Trump was a very serious candidate and thought that he had the best odds of winning and that's what happened
* I always recognized the appeal of his message
* I know the economy is much worse than is generally perceived and, for the typical American, living in a rotten economy, Trump seems to be the candidate that is going to appeal to them
* He's not talking about cutting social security or taking away government benefits, he's trying to be all things to all people
* It's a populist message - Everybody's going to win, just elect me and I'm going to make all your problems go away
* How am I going to make them go away? Because I'm different
* I'm not your typical politician, I'm a billionaire businessman who knows what I'm doing and everybody in government are incompetent fools
* He's right about that part - everybody in government is incompetent
* But that does not mean that Trump is a panacea to immediately make these problems go away
* But you know what? Why not take a shot at it?
* I knew that his message is powerful and would resonate
* Everybody is writing him off, saying he will lose to Hillary Clinton
* I don't believe so
* I think the media is still underestimating Donald Trump, despite the fact that they completely surprised them by winning the Republican nomination
* He might surprise them again by winning the General Election and being our next President
* Because, if you are anti-establishment, why would y…
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Dollar Dives, Gold Thrives, Puerto Rico Defaults – Ep. 163
3 mei 2016 · 31 min
* Gold finally traded about $1300 this morning; it was the first time since January of 2015 that the price of gold traded above $1300 Lees meer
* But by the time the U.S. Stock market opened, the price of gold started to sell off, and it couldn't hold $1300, in fact, it ended negative on the day - we closed about $1291
* When gold failed to hold $1300, there was a lot of selling in gold stocks; in fact gold stocks were way up in the pre-market, up from 2-7%
* Some of them opened with new 52-week highs, but then the selling commenced and gold stocks went down, silver stocks went down - GDX ended down about 1.7% on the day - not a very big move
* There will be some people out there who will say, "It's a reversal"
* We didn't hold $1200 either, the first time we got above it, but the next time we went to $1200, we got to $1260
* I think something similar might happen with $1300
* If I were a bear, I would cover, I'd be buying back
* I think it would be smart to buy the dip
* Especially when you look at the weakness in the U.S. dollar with continued today, in fact the dollar index traded down to about 92.50
* This is the first time since January of 2015 that the dollar index has been below 93
* The euro is above 115, that, too, is the first time since January of 2015
* But the dollar is weak across the board, and it's going to continue to get weak especially if we keep getting the weak data points like the data that came out today
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Gold and Currency Markets Expose U.S. Recovery Myth – SchiffReport
30 april 2016 · 31 min
* Friday April 29, 2016 was the final trading day for the month of April and I think this will turn out to be a pivotal month for the month of April and I will talk more about that later in this report Lees meer
* I wanted start by talking about the Federal Reserve's decision on Wednesday not to raise interest rates
* Few people really believed they would, but earlier in the year it was widely believed that by April the Fed would have raised interest rates at least one more time, given the fact that they began the tightening cycle in December with the first .25 rate hike
* What's more important than the failure to raise rates again was what they wrote in their statement with respect to the idea that future rate hikes are forthcoming
* The Fed is still clinging to the false narrative that this recovery that is basically already ended is on track, and that they will be raising interest rates at some point later in the year maybe 2 or 3 more times; they just decided not to do it in April
* The only acknowledgement that the Fed made with respect to the economy was that growth was slowing
* That is a dramatic understatement to say that growth has slowed
* If you go back to December, when the Fed confidently announced their first rate hike, they were forecasting that the economy would grow by about 3% in the first quarter of 2016
* Yesterday we got the government's first estimate for Q1 growth rate and it came in at just .5%
* You can hardly refer to that as a slowdown, when pretty much all of the growth that the Federal Reserve believed was going to materialize evaporated
* I don't know how they can simply say growth is slowing - growth is non-existent
* As a matter of fact, the New York, Fed, which recently began issuing its own GDP Now Forecast, are now forecasting that Q2 will be just .8%
* Averaging the two quarters out, you barely have any economic growth
* I think the New York Fed is still overly optimistic
* I think the Q1 report of .5% will be negative after…
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It’s Crunch Time For The Fed As Stagflation Looms – Ep. 162
27 april 2016 · 31 min
* Earlier today the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee, (FOMC) began their 2-day meeting Lees meer
* It concludes tomorrow and at 2:00 they will announce their decision on interest rates
* Nobody is anxiously awaiting that announcement
* Although there were plenty of fools a few months ago who actually believed the Federal Reserve would be raising interest rates, in fact they thought they were going to raise them in March and then, when they didn't there were a lot of people who still thought they might do it in April
* But some of these fools still believe the Fed is going to hike rates later in the year - maybe June
* Maybe June, September and December
* There are still people, like Goldman Sachs, who are looking for 3 rate hikes this year
* I was on a panel months ago with Jim Rickards, whom I have a lot of respect for, and back then he argued with me, because he believed the Fed would raise rates 2 if not 3 times in 2016
* I said the Fed would not raise rates at all
* Today I posted an interview that he gave on Bloomberg - now Jim Rickards says Janet Yellen has gone super-dove and she is not going to raise rates
* The reason Jim Rickards disagreed with me on the panel a couple of months ago is that, although he agrees with my thoughts on the economy, is that he thought the Fed would not recognize that the economy is very weak, rather that it believes the economy is still recovering
* He thought the Fed would raise rates anyway, which would cause a recession, cause the Fed to abort the increases, go back to zero and to QE4
* I said, I think we are going to skip all the rate hikes and go directly to rate cuts and QE4
* And now I think Jim has joined me in that perspective
* The question is: Will the Federal Reserve actually admit that the economy is that weak, or just not raise rates, which is tantamount to an admission of weakness
* We are going to get the first official look at Q1 GDP on Thursday
* There's a good chance that we will print a negative nu…
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Let’s Go Crazy – Episode 161
22 april 2016 · 28 min
* I recorded my last podcast on the afternoon of April 19, and I wanted to announce that later that evening, my first daughter was born - we named her Lilyan Ruth after both of our maternal grandmothers - so we now have Lilyan Ruth Schiff, she was 7 lbs 2 oz. of pure cuteness! Lees meer
* If you just looked at the close of the gold and silver market, you wouldn't know that much went on, gold closed up under $5 - silver was up about .04, but you wouldn't know that earlier in the morning gold was up better than $25, we did trade back above $1270
* Silver made a new high for the year - silver was up about 75¢ early in the morning, in fact I think it made its peak during the Draghi press conference
* We were above $1760 and then, just around 9am or so, there was a huge seller in the gold and the silver market and the whole complex went negative and we managed to close slightly positive on the day, but we had a huge sell-off intra-day following a big rally
* That doesn't mean the top is in - I think it's interesting; we just got a huge correction out of the way and the price went up - we flushed out a big seller and now that seller is out of the market and this market is still going a lot higher
* I put an article on my Facebook page about how gold stocks are way up this year, and they are way up this year, but the article basically said, "Don't buy", because gold is going to sell off.
* I'm seeing a log of mainstream articles now about why you should not jump on this bandwagon, how dangerous the gold market is
* And all this is just music to my ears. If you are bullish on gold, this is exactly what you want. You want everybody to be skeptical.
* You want this wall of worry, that gold and silver are going to climb, and we're going to climb with it while everybody else is worried about the crash, because they still don't get it.
* They're still talking about how the Fed is going to raise rates, and how that's bad for gold
* It's not bad for gold - it all depends on how t…
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Silver Shines as Goldman Sachs Dims – Ep. 160
19 april 2016 · 21 min
* Hi-Ho Silver! Seems to be the rallying cry for the day Lees meer
* The last podcast I recorded I talked about the breakout in silver and I actually regretted the fact that I didn't get a chance to talk about silver during my CNBC interview
* On my last podcast I mentioned how strong silver had been looking and it held up extremely well in the gold selloff during the prior few days
* Sure enough, we had a big breakout again today
* Silver was above $17 earlier today, the first time it has been that high all year
* Gold is still well below the highs, it needs to rally about $30 to get back to its high for this move
* I mentioned on the last podcast that I though the strength in silver was a good leading indicator for both gold and silver
* And I talked about all the traders who have been shorting silver, that had been a popular trade when the gold and silver ratio was breaking down, I thought that it made no sense to short silver
* To me it was a much better trade to buy silver when it's as cheap as it's ever been relative to gold
* This is good constructive action, in fact, the gold stocks are at new highs for the year
* The GDX, as I speak, is up 4% on the day; it's above $23 - this is the high for the year
* The juniors, GDXJ, that index is up over 6% - today! This is a new 52-week high
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Does The Silver Market See What The Atlanta Fed Missed? – Ep. 159
16 april 2016 · 28 min
* This is another week of bad economic data that most people have ignored Lees meer
* The stock market was up this week; the Dow closed up 1.8% on the year
* I don't know if the Dow was rising in spite the bad news or because of it
* The bad news means the economy is weak and corporate earnings are not there, and there are high multiples
* But of course, if the economy is weak, that takes the Fed out of the rate hiking game and I think puts it into the rate cutting - QE4 game
* So the market is caught between the opposing forces of cheap money and falling earnings on the back of a weak economy
* Gold was actually down on the week; it started off the week strong, then Thursday it got hit pretty good and today it recouped some of its losses
* But the standout was silver
* Silver was up almost 6% on the week; this is a new high
* Silver closed at the highest close of the year
* In fact, silver was strong with gold on Monday and Tuesday and when gold sold off on Wednesday and Thursday, silver really held up
* That's a good sign for both gold and silver
* I was on CNBC.com this week and I meant to say something about silver
* They're not even talking about silver in the mainstream media so they're missing an even bigger move
* They're acknowledging that gold's going up but they're not even looking at silver
* I mentioned on an earlier podcast that a number of people are shorting silver and buying gold because they saw the breakout to new highs on the gold/silver ratio and they wanted to jump on that trad
* I thought that was the wrong thing to do
* To me, seeing new highs in that ratio in favor of silver made me want to buy silver, since it's as cheap as it's been relative to gold
* If you like gold, just buy it; don't short silver because you could turn a winning trade into a losing trade
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Obama and Yellen Recovery Narrative Unraveling Fast – Ep. 158
12 april 2016 · 24 min
* The dollar index traded below 94 for a good part of the day, but it did manage to close up at 94 even, down just .20 Lees meer
* Gold was up another $19
* Silver really shined brightly today, up .54, just below $16/oz.
* Mining stocks, of course, were on fire; GDX was up just under 6% on the day, GDXJ up just under 7%
* This followed a spectacular day for the mining stocks on Friday
* In fact, even though gold itself was down a couple of bucks, we had a huge up day in the gold stocks
* Between Friday and today, I think this is the biggest two back-to-back gains for gold stocks all year
* The catalyst was the Atlanta Fed Q1 GDP estimate downgrade all the way down to .1
* If you remember, from listening to my podcasts, the very first time the Atlanta Fed came out with its upward revision, with a lot of fanfare, to 2.7%, I said that that was all political and that they would have to walk that back all quarter long, and now they have eliminated the entire estimated gain
* A fair estimate might have been -.1, but President Obama is still saying we have the strongest advanced economy in the world
* I don't know what his definition of "strong" or "advanced" is, but we might have one of the weakest of the advanced economies
* It's just that nobody wants to accept that fact yet
* Here's where it really gets interesting: CNBC was very dismissive of the weak economic numbers
* They are characterizing the weak Q1 as similar to previous years' weak Q1, where the weather pushed back some economic activity to Q2, causing rebounds
* They said the same thing is going to happen this year. No it's not.
* This year is different from last year
* First, let's talk about inventories: February and January Wholesale Trade Inventories have been revised down from +.3 to -.2
* Last year, companies were still building up inventories, believing in the recovery narrative, boosting GDP
* The inventory unwind that I have been talking about for the last year is just beginning
* It starte…
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Trump’s Very Massive Recession May Have Already Begun – Ep. 157
6 april 2016 · 33 min
* Today is the Wisconsin Primary but Donald Trump has been getting a lot of flack in the media over the last couple of days about his comments about the U.S. economy, particularly in the financial media because Donald Trump has now predicted a "very massive recession" in the U.S. Lees meer
* He didn't just say a recession, he's predicting a massive recession
* Most of the pundits on television don't see any recession at all - not even a mild one
* So here you have Donald Trump saying, not only is the recession going to be massive, it's going to be very massive
* The media is all over Trump: "What is he talking about? The economy is in great shape! He's peddling all kinds of fiction! We have this massive economic growth!"
* the President television today taking credit for this great economy with all these years of jobs
* Of course what the President doesn't admit to, is, it's not job creation - it's job destruction
* We're destroying full time jobs, the by-product of that destruction is that we create a bunch of part-time jobs that people don't really want but that's all they can get
* Yet the President is taking credit for that
* It's like setting a fire and taking credit for putting it out
* That's what the Federal Reserve did with the 2008 Financial Crisis
* Let's look at some of the economic news that came out over the past couple of days that resulted in the Atlanta Fed reducing its Q1 GDP estimate - yet again - to .4
* In last Friday's podcast I said that I thought they would be revising it down, and based on the numbers that just came out, they did
* One if the reasons the Atlanta Fed cited for the revision was yesterday's release of February Factory Orders
* They were expected to be down 1.6; instead it came out as -1.7, which was not that big a miss unless you consider the previous downward revision, which means it dropped from a lower level
* That took something out of the GDP numbers as did the very bad auto sales that I did mention in Friday's podca…
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Jobs Report Merely An April Fool’s Joke – Ep. 156
2 april 2016 · 24 min
* Well, it's April Fool's Day today and there certainly were a lot of fools out on Wall Street buying all the nonsense about the better than expected Non-Farm Payroll numbers Lees meer
* Many of those fools were also fooled into thinking that these supposedly good jobs numbers puts a June rate hike back on the table
* In fact, these April Fools were out in force in March when several Fed officials were talking about the possibility of April being a live meeting, and they bought it; Janet Yellen potentially set them straight a few days ago, but then again they hear some numbers that they think are better than expected, and they think, "Aha! The Fed is about to raise rates."
* When are they going to wake up and realize that none of these numbers matter - it doesn't matter what they are, better than expected, worse than expected, the Fed can't raise rates
* If the Fed could raise rates, they would have already done it.
* Yes, they did raise rates in December, they didn't want to raise rates, they did it anyway, and look what happened
* Maybe you can think of that rate hike as a trial balloon, but it was the Hindenburg of trial balloons, it blew up, and there's no way the Fed wants to launch another one
* The first quarter came to an end yesterday and the U.S. stock market actually managed to gain
* It was up about 1%, but the year started off as the worse year in the history of the stock market
* Back in February, U.S. stocks had the weakest beginning of the year in the history of the stock market - going all the way through the great depression
* That happened because the Fed raised rates
* Do you think they want to take that chance again?
* Why did the market recover? Because people then believed that the Fed was not going to be raising rates, in fact, the weakness in the market is one of the reasons they believe that
* So the market going down helped the Fed to change its tune, enabling the market to go back up
* Now they're not going to take another chance to …
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When Doves Talk, Gold Listens – Ep. 155
30 maart 2016 · 42 min
* All the talk last week in the financial media was the fact that several Federal Reserve officials had given speeches somehow putting April back on the table as a live FOMC meeting, where the Fed might raise rates Lees meer
* In fact, even earlier this week, even yesterday, an official from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco commented that the Fed should continue with rate hikes because the economy is strong and the data is on target
* I did not buy those comments for one second - my last podcast was titled, "Fed Bankers Bark But Won't Bite", and my commentary was titled, "Two Down and Two to Go" meaning that the Fed had already dispensed with two of the 4 rate hikes telegraphed for 2016 and they would take the other 2 rate hikes away
* So, as everybody else was anticipating rate hikes, I was saying, not only are they not going to raise them in April, they are not going to raise them at all in 2016
* What happened today? Janet Yellen gave a speech to the Economic Club of New York, one of the most dovish speeches, if not the most dovish she has ever given
* As a result of the speech, the price of gold was up about $20 on the day; we closed above $1240
* In fact a couple of days ago, we had gotten nearly down to $1200
* That shows you the strength of this bull market in gold, despite the talk of a rate hike in April, and despite the rally in the dollar, gold held its position above $1200
* To me, that's very bullish, the question when will all the bears throw in the towel?
* Goldman Sachs is still looking for gold to hit $1000 - $900
* They're still looking for a strong dollar and a bunch of rate hikes
* Although Goldman Sachs is not as bearish on gold as Harry Dent
* Harry Dent called for $700 gold when I debated him on Friday's Alex Jones show
* That was a good debate, and you can check it out on my YouTube channel
* The dollar was down across the board today
* The dollar index barely held on to the 95 handle, it closed at 95.15, off not quite a full p…
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Fed Bankers Bark But Won’t Bite – Ep. 154
25 maart 2016 · 28 min
* The markets are closed on Good Friday, the markets are closed, but I did want to take time to record this podcast Lees meer
* Some people were wondering why I didn't do a podcast on Wednesday, the day we had a big drop in the price of gold
* Believe me, I love doing podcasts, when the price of gold goes down, because I know a lot of people who are interested in gold want to know what my thoughts are on a day that it happens to go down
* As it turns out, I did have an interview on CNBC Fast Money, and my comments are available on that interview, posted on my YouTube channel
* Gold was down about $30 on that day and declined further yesterday
* Silver was down as well
* Gold is still holding above $1200 and gold is still positive on the year, not so for the U.S. Stock Market, which slipped back into negative territory this week
* Not only was gold weaker but the dollar was considerably stronger, and commodities in general, like crude oil, copper - also went down
* So what was the catalyst?
* You might say maybe it was because gold failed to rally on the news of the terrorist attack in Belgium
* News of this kind often triggers a knee-jerk reaction to buy gold, but the rally really wasn't that big, and when a market doesn't rally on good news, it generally means it is over bought, or it's ready to go down
* To me, however, that was a non-event, as far as gold is concerned
* I don't buy gold because of geopolitical instability - that has nothing to do with my strategy
* The real reason to buy gold has to do with inflation, and the central banks creating it, artificially low interest rates, negative interest rates and Quantitative Easing
* It has nothing to do with terrorism, except to the extent that terrorist attacks lead to more government spending that is not supported by taxes which means more money printing, more inflation and bigger deficits
* In the long run, it is good for gold, but in the short run, it is just a bunch of noise, but traders can certainly…
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Government Encourages Student Debt While Discouraging Hiring – Ep. 153
23 maart 2016 · 29 min
* Before I get into the economic news of the past couple of days, the big event today was the terrorist attacks in Belgium and I want to offer my condolences to the people of Belgium and also on behalf of my listeners from the U.S. and all over the world Lees meer
* This will probably work to the benefit of Donald Trump, who didn't waste much time in capitalizing on the event
* We do have a couple of primaries today, Arizona and Utah
* In Arizona, Trump is well in the lead - it's a winner take all state and today's news will probably solidify Trump's lead there
* The wild card will be the Utah primary where Donald Trump is in last place. Mitt Romney didn't endorse Cruz, but said a vote for Cruz is a vote against Trump. If Cruz gets less than 50% of the votes, however, the delegates would be divided proportionately.
* Not much action in the market - Gold spiked up on the news of the Brussels attacks, and closed up just under $5
* Silver was up earlier this morning, but there's a lot of support building in the silver market
* I had noticed that there were some traders shorting silver and buying gold
* When gold gets this expensive relative to silver, I wouldn't want to bet that that trend continues
* I would say, if you like gold, just buy gold, don's short silver, because you could turn a winning trade into a losing trade
* The big action in the currency markets was in the British Pound
* The Aussie and the Canadian dollar continue to rise against the U.S. dollar
* European currencies were a little bit weaker, but the main weakness was in the British pound
* One would think, wouldn't the euro be hurt more than the pound, by the terrorist attack?
* Traders believe that the attacks will increase the refugee problem, which is at the core of Great Britain's possible exit from the European Union, and the pound is falling on that speculation
* Most of the economic data that came out yesterday and today was weaker than expected
* They were expecting a bounce in the C…
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Yellen’s Feet Were Always Cold – Ep. 152
17 maart 2016 · 30 min
* Happy St. Patrick's Day everybody and to those of you who have been waiting since yesterday for this podcast, you won't be disappointed Lees meer
* Yesterday I did an interview with Liz Claman at Fox Business News and I did respond to the Fed's decision. That video is up on my YouTube Channel.
* The Fed did not raise interest rates, which didn't surprise a lot of people, but what did surprise a lot of people was the the Fed indicated, based on their Dot Plot, the consensus is that the Fed now sees two rate hikes coming in 2016
* If you recall, at the end of last year and earlier this year, the Fed was still projecting 4 rate hikes in 2016
* What I said from the very beginning is, "No chance."
* In fact I still thought it was more likely that we'd get a rate cut
* Now it's two down and two to go, because now the Fed is only pretending that they will raise rates twice this year instead of pretending that they're going to raise rates 4 times
* What's really interesting now is how the Fed is starting to lose credibility that it never should have had
* Steve Liesman asked Janet Yellen a good question: He said, what about your credibility - you said you would raise rates 4 times and now it's 2 times, and you said you were data dependent and unemployment is below 5%, creating 200,000+ jobs per year and the core CPI is up 2.3%
* He said, if you're not raising rates now, under what circumstances will you raise rates?
* Janet Yellen didn't really answer the question, but I thought she was thinking, "Don't you understand, we never intended to raise rates."
* I pointed this out from the beginning: The Federal Reserve never said that they would raise rates 4 times. They said, based on our economic forecasts, this is what we think is going to happen - BUT if we're wrong, it's not going to happen
* Janet Yellen said to Steve Liesman, "Look, these dots don't mean anything - this is what we're thinking at a moment in time, but it's not a promise."
* For some reason, everybody …
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Can Trump Make America Great Again? – Ep. 151
14 maart 2016 · 37 min
* We have some key primary elections coming up tomorrow and I want to take an opportunity to do a podcast on Donald Trump and the Trump phenomenon Lees meer
* A lot of people are under the impression that I am endorsing Donald Trump because I have said some positive things about him and his campaign
* But I want to make it clear that I am not doing that
* I am not convinced that he is going to be a good President, although it's possible that he could
* I think there's no chance that Hillary Clinton would be a good President, that's clear
* Donald Trump is a wild card
* I do have a lot of problems with much of what Donald Trump says
* What is more telling is that he has so much support because he is tapping into a vein in the Republican Party, in fact, outside the Republican Party because he is getting Independents and Democrats to cross over and vote in Republican primaries because some people find his message so appealing
* The country is in much worse shape than the media or the Federal Reserve or Congress are leading people to believe
* Everybody keeps talking about the recovery, especially President Obama, but the people who are showing up for Trump at these rallies know there is no recovery
* In fact, the economy is in even worse shape than even Donald Trump recognizes, but at least he is talking about the enormity of the problems
* He's right - America isn't great. There are a lot of people who are in denial
* They say we don't have to make America great again, because it's still great
* No, it's not
* Based on any measure, the U.S. economy is far from its greatest
* Donald Trump recognizes that American has lost her greatness and he wants to restore it
* Voters want to make America great again and they believe Donald Trump can do it
* Donald Trump probably believes he can do it and that is part of the problem, because he can't make America great again
* Only free market capitalism can make America great again and I'm not sure Donald Trump understands…
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Draghi’s Bazooka Backfires, Gold Explodes – Ep.150
11 maart 2016 · 25 min
* Mario Draghi at the ECB fired his big bazooka today; people had anticipated that that would be the case Lees meer
* In fact, it seems like he fired a bigger blast than people were expecting, he announced that he would reduce negative interest rates further
* They moved from -.3 to -.4 and he announced an expansion of their quantitative easing program from €60 billion per month to €80 billion, which means that their program is not larger than the Fed's; remember we were doing $85 billion a month before we tapered it down
* So what the ECB is doing is closer to $90 billion
* The problem for the market is that even though he fired a bigger blast than the markets had anticipated, after he fired it, he put that bazooka back in his holster
* What I mean by that, is at the end of his press conference, Draghi mention that he thought that this would probably be the last cut, that -40 is as low as the ECB is going to go
* Now maybe the market was just looking for an excuse to reverse, but the Euro, which had initially dropped sharply, about 1.5% down on the day, following the initial announcement, reversed and ended up falling about 2%, so it was a 3.5% reversal, and from what I've read, this is the biggest reversal, ever in the euro, from down to up
* In fact the dollar index went through 4 handles, at its highs this morning, the dollar index was at 98.5 and at its lows it was trading at around 95
* Many people think this is a failure for the ECB; they want a weaker euro, because they want more inflation
* I think the ECB is going to get more inflation, whether the euro weakens or strengthens against the dollar, because it's still going to weaken in real purchasing power
* Just as I mentioned in yesterday's podcast, referring to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Mario Draghi is saying that he doesn't have enough inflation, and interestingly enough, Draghi is going to get more inflation, and more than he's bargaining for
* He mentioned in his press conference that these th…
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Why Didn’t the Fed “Just Say No”? – Ep. 149
10 maart 2016 · 37 min
* So far it's been a pretty light week but what little economic data that has been released is bad, and all of it evidences the recession that nobody wants to acknowledge Lees meer
* Let's start with the Consumer Credit numbers that came out on Monday. Not only was the number extremely weak, but the revisions to the prior month were even weaker
* The initial report for the growth in consumer credit in December was $21.3 billion
* Now I don't think growth in consumer credit is good; I think it undermines long-term living standards
* The last thing you want to do is borrow money to consume, one of the points I really hammered home in my book, "How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes"
* If you haven't bought that book, you should get a copy
* Be sure to pick the collector's edition because, in addition to being a really beautiful book, it has two entirely new chapters. If you already have the original one, buy the collector's edition and give the original away to a friend.
* Consumers should not borrow to consume. They should save to consume.
* Businesses should use our savings to invest in capital equipment to grow the economy
* When you consume savings, you undermine long-term economic growth and therefore future consumption is diminished
* The problem is we're living in a bubble, and in order to sustain this bubble economy, consumers have to keep spending
* In this economy, however in order to keep spending they have to keep borrowing because they're certainly not earning, and they don't have any savings
* This has to blow up eventually but right now, it's all about keeping the music going
* Consumer credit was revised down from the originally reported $21.3 billion to just $6.4 billion of growth
* They were looking for January to grow by $16.5 billion, and of course, this also includes student loans, as well as credit cards
* Instead, we got an increase of just $10.5 billion
* Consumer credit growth imploded in December and January
* If there's all this job…
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Part-time Employment SURGES as Weekly Earnings Drop the MOST EVER!
6 maart 2016 · 24 min
* The media, the Federal Reserve and President Obama continue to ignore the overwhelming evidence out this week, in fact every week for the past couple of months that the U.S. economy has already slipped back into recession Lees meer
* The last revision to Q4 GDP showed the economy grew by 1% for the quarter, but remember, the government never acknowledges a recession until it's practically over
* The Great Recession started in December of 2007 but it wasn't until the fall of 2008 that the government finally went back and revised the numbers down to show when the recession actually began
* Halfway through the recession, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street didn't even have recession in their forecast despite the fact that we had been in one for more than 6 months
* What everybody is focusing on are the jobs numbers
* We got another non-farm payroll report yesterday and, again, low unemployment, 4.9% and more than 200,000 jobs created
* President Obama, as he peddles his fiction of economic recovery, focuses on the fact that the unemployment rate is low, and we're creating all these jobs, proving that his policies are working
* He's trying to take credit for a recovery that doesn't exist. Let's look behind the numbers of yesterday's better than expected jobs report
* First of all the headline number: how many jobs were created? The consensus was 190,000 and we got 242,000 - a big beat
* Not only that, last month's number up to 172,000
* The unemployment rate held steady at 4.9%, still below the psychologically important 5%
* Here is a detail that President Obama didn't mention at all: average hourly earnings were expected to rise .2% and that followed the big jump last month of .5%
* If you remember, on my video blog last month I said that was a one-off event
* That increase was the result of all the minimum wage hikes that kicked in in January
* I said that number would reverse by February and that's exactly what happened
* Instead of getting an increase of .2%…
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Thoughts On The Economy, Buffet, Oscars & Politics – Ep.148
1 maart 2016 · 46 min
* The Dow finished the last trading day in February, with a 123-point decline, in fact the Dow Jones closed at the low of the day; the NASDAQ was down 32.5 points Lees meer
* Gold reversed the declined from Friday, it was up $16.5 today it's up another $2.50 as I record this, we're now back above $1240
* The reason gold declined on Friday was that the rate hike was apparently back on the table because of some stronger than expected Q4 GDP numbers and also the consumer income and spending numbers were hotter than expected
* If you remember, I thought Q4 GDP would be revised down from .7%, in fact the consensus was for a downward revision to .4%; as it turned out, the government moved it up to +1%
* The reason for the adjustment was that inventories were not draw down as much as was originally thought, so I suppose that will happen in 2016 Q1
* In fact, the Atlanta GDP has already walked down their estimate for Q1 a bit, since that number came out.
* I don't think it really matters with the government says Q4 GDP was, because before the year is over they will revise that quarter negative because they will have to admit that the recession began last quarter
* They always declare a recession after the fact by going back and revising down the data
* We got the January trade deficit in merchandise that actually came out bigger than expected; $62.2 billion vs $61 billion - that's a lot of red ink for merchandise trade in one month
* What also spooked the gold market was the income and spending numbers - hotter than anticipated - personal income up .5 vs .4 expected, spending also up .5 vs .3 expected
* The core CPE numbers, the inflation numbers were hotter also; instead of being unchanged, were up .1
* Year over year, we were up 1.7 on the core and 1.3 overall
* The idea was that these numbers indicated that the rate hikes are back on the table
* I don't think so; especially when you look at the horrible numbers that came out today
* First is the Chicago PMI for Febr…
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Even Cramer Can See Bullard Is Blind – Ep. 147
26 februari 2016 · 36 min
* The rally in the U.S. stock market continues, the Dow closing up more than 212 right at the high of the day Lees meer
* It's not just the Dow Jones that is rising, and by the way, this is the highest the Dow Jones has closed since early January, so it's better than a one month high
* Oil prices closed above $33/barrel for West Texas, again that's the highest level since early January
* The dollar is weak across the board, in fact the Canadian dollar hit a 3-month high today against the U.S. dollar - this currency has really been beaten up until recently
* Gold, higher again today, up about 4 or 5 bucks, it closed above $1232
* What is behind the rally? I think it is the deluge of bad economic news that keeps raining down on this market
* I believe more and more people are beginning to realize that the Fed is not only not going to be raising interest rates in 2016, but they will cut them, and do another round of economic stimulus and that's is what is saving the market
* The question is, with the Fed actually validate those expectations?
* Even Jim Cramer of CNBC can see there's a recession
* I just put up an article on my Facebook page yesterday, Cramer is saying the Fed is blind and can't see the recession
* Maybe Cramer has been listening to my podcasts...
* Do you remember the famous interview with Jim Cramer and Erin Burnett that went viral and he went on a rant about the Fed, "They know nothing!"
* You've got Cramer calling out the Fed for not appreciating the weakness in the economy and calling on them to do something
* I think they are going to do something, they're not just going to turn a deaf ear to the economy
* But the Fed is still officially sticking to the party line
* Today I wanted to talk about the CNBC interview with Jim Bullard
* First, he told Matt Belvedere he was concerned that "inflation expectations" were too low
* Of all the things you're going to worry about as a central banker, you're going to worry about the fact that people don…
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Recession Hiding in Plain Sight – Ep. 146
25 februari 2016 · 26 min
* We had some wild swing in the market today, particularly the stock market and the gold market Lees meer
* At one point this morning, the Dow Jones was down about 270 points
* It finished the day up 53 points
* There wasn't any real news that caused the market to go up; people were buying the dip
* The oil market also turned around; it was down a buck and change and managed to close up .20-.30
* Gold was the mirror image; gold was up at one point to $27-$28, back above $1250
* Then when the stock market rallied back the gold market sold off
* It managed to closed with a small $3 gain or so
* Gold stocks closed the day mixed, most still positive on the day
* The reason why the stock market falling is positive for gold is the effect that a falling stock market is going to have on the Fed, and its decisions on future interest rate hikes
* Even if the stock market is not going down, the Fed will still reverse on rates because of the economy
* The economy is back in recession, whether the Fed wants to acknowledge the fact or not
* We had another Fed official, Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, actually came out saying he sees no signs that a recession is imminent
* He sees no reason why the Fed should not go forward with the planned rate hikes for 2016
* Maybe rose-colored glasses are standard issue over at the Fed
* There is ample evidence that there is a recession
* However, if someone of Lacker's stature would come out and say, "Look, we're going into a recesssion, but rates are really low and the Fed has to raise them anyway, and this is going to be difficult." That would be honest.
* But the Fed is saying they are going to raise rates because the economy is in great shape
* To do otherwise is to admit that the Fed's monetary policy failed
* The Fed is playing a very dangerous game
* Not only do they risk making the economy worse, they risk their credibility
* Here is some economic news that came out today, after Lacker's speech
* At 9:45 am we got …
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Stagflation Rears Its Ugly Head – Ep.145
24 februari 2016 · 28 min
* It looks like Jamie Dimon's bottom turned out to be the trap door I thought it was, with the Dow Jones today down almost 190 points Lees meer
* The market was let lower by the financials, JP Morgan itself down better than 4%
* Remember it was Jami Dimon having the confidence to put a year's salary into company stock that sparked this rally, but it seems to be losing steam and rolling over
* Because we're not going to get a lasting bottom until the Fed makes that bottom
* It's not going to be a Jamie Dimon bottom, it has to be a Janet Yellen bottom; and as much as I have no interest in seeing Janet Yellen's bottom, that's exactly what we're going to have to do to get a real low in this market
* Every single decline that the market has experienced since 2009, the bottom has been set by the Fed
* It's been the Fed forming that bottom by coming to the rescue with rate cuts, QE programs, Operation Twist, hinting about more QE, and so far, the Fed has done none of that
* The Fed is still sticking to its narrative that rate hikes are coming
* Yes, nobody believes they're coming anytime soon, but that is still the official forecast
* Meanwhile, the markets can't even deal with rates as is
* The gold market will be the mirror image of the stock market; gold was up about $16 today
* It reversed a near $20 decline yesterday, but it consolidating its huge move above $1200
* So we are not getting the pullback that Dennis Gartman and Jim Cramer are hoping for to get on board
* I think if people want to get on board this train, this is the stop.
* If you like gold, just buy it and be happy that you're getting it for $1225 - yes, you could have bought it below $1100 in December, but $1225 is still cheap
* The most interesting about yesterday's drop in gold - the gold stocks didn't really decline
* Most of the gold stocks finished positive on the day
* Gold stocks added to their gains today, and many are sitting on their highest close of the year, and several are at 52-wee…
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Gold Sacks Goldman Sachs – Ep. 144
19 februari 2016 · 30 min
* What a difference two days make! Two days ago I recorded my podcast, "Goldman Sachs Sacks Gold", and that was because Goldman Sachs' comments about shorting gold were partially responsible for the severity of the drop in gold over the holiday weekend Lees meer
* Today, gold is fighting back, at one gold was up better than $30, although as I record this the price has pulled back a bit, still above $1230 - up about $22 on the day
* Gold stocks, the GDX index I mentioned in my last podcast, was up 6% on the day, the biggest move up of the year
* That index has recovered everything it lost on Tuesday
* GDX would have been up a lot more, except that Newmont Mining came out with lower than expected earnings for the 4th quarter; so that stock was only up about 1% after dropping 7% in the first hour of trading
* Several gold stocks made new 52-week highs today and several others are at the highest point of this calendar year
* A very strong day for gold and gold stocks just a couple of days after Goldman Sachs recommended selling the metal short
* People would have been much better off shorting Goldman Sachs
* One of the other catalysts for the rise in the price of gold may well have been the comments made overnight by Jim Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
* After I read his comments, I expected the price of gold to rally right away, but it didn't begin until later this morning
* Bullard was one of the real Hawks on the Fed, he wanted to raise rates much earlier, citing concern about a stock market bubble
* Talk about closing the barn door after the horses have left! They have left the stables, the property, they're barely on the planet!
* His comments last night about why the Fed should slow down the rate hikes are ironic, because his reason is the volatility in the stock market
* Let me get this straight: He wants to raise rates because we don't want a stock market bubble;
* They raise rates, the bubble is deflating and he wants to stop th…
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Goldman Sachs Sacks Gold – Ep. 143
17 februari 2016 · 24 min
* The big story of the day was the pullback in the price of gold Lees meer
* Gold was above $1260 last week; it pulled back a little bit on Friday, but the real damage happened overnight on Monday, while we were celebrating Presidents' Day
* At one point gold was down almost $50; trading even below $1190
* When we opened up for trading in New York, gold was back above $1210.; it tried to rally, but really couldn't, in fact the only time gold rallied today is when the Dow sold off to +50 from +150
* The stock market and the gold market are the mirror image of each other right now
* Ultimately, I do believe that stocks, gold stocks and gold will be going in the same direction because they will all respond positively to the Fed admitting that it will not raise interest rates, and in fact cut them and will launch QE4
* Now, gold is the safe haven from weak stocks, but the best environment is when the Fed steps up to save stocks, and that's when the gold trade is going to catch a bid
* But when the market closed on the highs of the day, up over 200 points, that means gold closed on the low of the day
* GLD, the ETF for gold, for today's decline, we were down $35.90
* In the spot market, we closed right about $1200 even
* A good point: look at the gold stocks, GDX, that index was down 8.65%
* In all the big gold up days, we never had a comparable up day for gold stocks
* On gold's best day, the biggest day since 2008, gold stocks were just up about 5%
* Yet on the down side, a -3% move in gold produces a -9% move in gold stocks
* Why is all the movement on the down side?
* One, there's still more fear than greed in the gold market
* This is a good sign - a bull market climbing a wall of worry
* This is just a resumption of a long-term secular market that began in 1999-2000
* Goldman Sachs rhetoric may in part be responsible for the sharp selloff
* I mention on last week's podcast that Goldman was recommending a sell on gold, that it was going back down to $1000
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